Batboard

Ok I read batlabs info for programing. Can anyone recomend a few good programing computers mine just shot crap and is dead. I dont know what 486's are compatable and which are not. Imput would be great.

I run an old P60 with DOS 6.2 and it works fine. I think that the P60 was the next unit up the line following the 486. If you're a real conservative, limit yourself to a 25 mHz 386. Best place to find these, if you can find any at all, is a hamfest. Ads in the paper these days all seem to be P300s and upwards.

Everyone has their own preference, usually by experience. I prefer the IBM thinkpad 755C, they can be picked up cheap on ebay. I have the car adapter, so can plug into the lighter to run programming in my vehicle, and of course the AC adapter for the house. I do have batteries for it, but never use them, want to make sure of my power source for programming.

Mine are 486/50's, buy you may want to get a 386 for programming radio's like the syntor, etc, as the 486 is generally too fast (never thought I would ever say that...lol)

HI:

What Motorola used for many of their FTR's was the
T4700 Series. Very good Computer, Almost impossible
to By-pass the Password.

Finding ones in Mint Condition are becomming tough to
find....Lots of acc'y for them too, Docking Station, Removable
IDE Hard Drives, Battery Power, Color Screen, etc.

Today, the computer hardware is pretty inexpensive, however
the " labor " to set one up is where the real costs are located
along with Accessories.

Even though you might find a Portable Computer for 25.00 ~ 50.00,
that all important Battery is typically 100.00, so don't let the cheap.
costs fool you.

Everything else such as the OS. Installation , can add to the
costs, so depends what you feel your time is worth.

Monty

I use an old Sanyo laptop that has been very reliable. It's a 386-25 and will do 8 if I switch it in the BIOS. I mainly program x9000's and MCX1000's so it works much better for me. If you are programming some of the newer radios you can get away with a faster computer.

Take a look at Zenith Data Systems notebooks. I use a Z-Note 325L 386-25. Its BIOS is the most versatile I have ever used on any notebook PC.

As long as the 386-486 machine you are considering has a 9-pin serial port with an 8250 UART or better, it should work great. A good tool to determine the UART is Microsoft's MSD.EXE that comes with DOS 6.22